Filthy Rats

The real estate thing proved to be another scam, preying on people with the lure of seemingly easy money:
“Come get a real estate license. You can make big commissions. Our courses are only 2500 dollars!” That amount of money is pennies when you think of the promise one single sale brings. Even the smallest property can yield enough to live on for three months.
Arrgh! I suppose that’s what you get when you take the way out that seems easiest- and that’s closer to broke. Just hope that this decision comes before you liquidate every single possession you have that is worth any amount of money at all. Which we are programmed to see a monetary value in every single thing... except in ourselves.

Nobody seems to have a sense of pride or respect for honest work anymore. My hard work was really getting me nowhere but my foolish pride, and my resentment towards my ex-wife, were killing me slowly but surely. Not to mention the slow and methodical suicide of the seemingly routine normalcy- an unrecognized battle with drug and alcohol consumption. It really was no conscious secret to me that I was no better than those I criticized. I could not break myself free from the spell of consumerism that told me that it was normal and all okay.
"Don't look back, your day's behind you. Have a glass of Windsor Whiskey!" Or, "Head for the mountains, Busch Beer."
Consumerism, Capitalism, and the consistent erosion of Individualism all keep us in an economic slavery that has made us all equal. Equal yet divided in so very many ways. When will the constant societal pummeling cease for a moment long enough for us to take a breath with which to admirably fight with?
Our captors know that they cannot let up on their oppression that keeps us held down in a dismal state with which we are unable to construct our own thoughts enough  for a fair chance to fight back.

My labors earned me a room of my own in the basement, which I converted into a music studio. In reality, I had been assigned a task to turn a utility area into a usable den but my fantasy of having a career in the media, conveniently replacing Danny’s loft space studio, kept me from seeing that. I think The Fabulous T-Birds were playing in my head while I set to work building a bulkhead around the ductwork of the furnace. The framing needed to be built in order to drywall. It needed plenty of soundproofing and some carpet. Julie had me build a closet that she could grow pot in as well. Danny helped me build some counter space, appropriate for the computer, keyboards, and appliances, which included a Tascam Four Track Analog recording system that he had gifted me.

One day, while Danny was making plans to move out of the building, Andy was making plans to move in. He quickly befriended Sean Adams, and his band mate, Mike. “Ace music Dave” was there bringing orders of guitar strings (marijuana) to musicians that day. Mike’s girlfriend, Laura, was painting a recreation of Vincent Van Gogh’s “Starry Night”, on the walls of their studio space. It wasn’t hard to tell that she was there spending time trying to save their relationship. I think I was the only one that picked up on life budding elsewhere in the room that day.
Taking it upon myself, I tried to warn them about Andy but they were already under his spell. The guys were snowed.

That’s when Dave changed the subject, telling me about a guy interested in selling his DJ business. Little did I realize that it was just a dope fiend trying to gain purchase in the mind of a man with the dope- confidence created to confuse and manipulate him.
Julie agreed that, since it came with a listing in the Yellow Pages, it was a good investment. Danny and I weren’t interested in the DJ business. We only wanted the P.A. system that was for sale. It was a great buy, and we happened to need it for the upcoming Memorial Day show. The guy selling it wanted us to go do a DJ gig for a wedding reception, saying he’d loan us the speakers to do it with, and that we could think about buying the business.  Neither Myself, nor Danny, nor Julie, could see the actual writing on the wall. We were so blinded with a chance at something different than we were accustomed to or understood that we failed all the way around to approach the situation with any kind of LOGIC. We said we would do the gig, and that we would think about the prospect of the DJ business. Julie called him back two hours later, saying we’d take the business off of his hands, and asked where to meet up with him to do the transaction. Now, it appeared as though we were the owners of “AA Bands and DJ’s”.

The wedding gig was on a Saturday, and was being held at a Country Club, in Jenison, which threw up red flags to me but Julie said there was absolutely nothing to worry about. She said it would be an easy two hundred bucks. We finalized doing the gig and set off in our routine.

It seemed like I was the only one around the day Andy actually moved into the building, so it was me that ended up stuck with helping him move his things, which also meant helping him move his things from the woman’s house he was leaving. Judging by the looks on her face, she had been mistreated for the last time. Just the way she looked at me with Andy let me know that I was helping the enemy. Her eyes told me many things- most of all that I was a piece of shit for helping him. She didn't know who I was to Andy. All I could do was offer her my sympathy through my body language, and my eye contact with her that said how sorry I was and how ashamed that I was involved in the least.

There were many pieces of musical merchandise, mainly brand new electric guitars that still were in their boxes. Every bit of it was hot. Chet, his boss, was storing a lot of this loot in the basement of his home. The story was, so Andy wouldn’t sell it all for drugs while he was supposed to be getting clean from Heroine and Crack Cocaine- just another con job on Chet. It worked well for a while but Chet was just as much of a crook, robbing people with a smile and some paint equipment. Andy swore that he was no longer using but everything, other than his words, said something else entirely. One of those things that spoke to me was the motor home he left for abandoned in the lot at the building we moved him into. It was eventually towed to the impound yard and sold for scrap. The other was the crack pipe that I saw laying on the floor under the couch where it had been placed in an attempt to hide it. Little did they realize that I would just pull up some rug before them to listen while he and a girl with him played and sang. My words that I added were something along the lines of, " crack pipe on the floor..." letting him know that I had seen what was really going on that day.

As people progressed toward leaving the building in the weeks that followed, Andy was liquidating the things he had been accumulating. Story was that he had to move back to Florida to help his mother, meaning  that he wouldn’t be there very long. He had survived shooting a near fatal dose of bleach into his arm almost two years ago, and now was on his way to spend time with his mother while his body was yet to realize he was walking dead.

He offered to sell his P.A. equipment to me for seven hundred bucks. The lighting system, a good size mixer, amplifier, a pair of one thousand watt Yamaha speakers, light cans, miscellaneous lines and patch cords, etc. It was a great deal that I just couldn’t believe- too good. He knew Julie had the money to pay for it, and I was right in the middle of gearing up for the show. It just made sense at the time, so she bought it for me. She liked the music room so much that she bought a mini fridge with a tap handle and a carbonic system for a pony keg to put in there too. Yeah, I really thought I had things made now. Thanks to the spell that alcohol had on me every bit of sense that I had was compromised. 

Julie went with me to do the wedding reception gig in Jenison. The father had called beforehand to explain what music tracks they wanted, and when they wanted them to be played. It was pretty exciting for me even though it was a wedding reception, which almost every band dreads. I had spent days going to thrift stores, buying all the music tapes and CD’s I could find that might be good additions to a DJ library.
I just couldn’t remember, did he say NO Hawaiian shirts or did he say WEAR Hawaiian shirts?

We arrived and set up. I first smelled a rat when, after an hour, we were never offered a drink or any type of hospitality. Having never done a wedding gig before, I was under the impression that it’s a celebration regardless of whether you are “just” the DJ or not. Not even a glass of water was offered to us.

At one point, some of the girls came and gathered around to have their pictures taken with me. Little did I realize, they were sent by the father of the bride. They were gathering pictures to use against me.

The next day I received a phone call from an irate Dutchman who felt like stiffing someone on his wedding expenses. He was yelling, demanding his two hundred dollars back because I showed up wearing long hair and a Hawaiian shirt! It didn’t settle well on me, since I had just been awoken from sleep, so I was irate as well but more so.
Julie took the phone from me, and somewhere along the conversation, agreed to refund him his precious money. This only confirmed my fears, and I was quick to chalk it up to one of the reasons nobody likes doing weddings, and moving on with my renewed opinion about Jenison.
Now my attention was on satisfying myself over the DJ service purchase by calling the guy to discuss the Yellow page listing, which was tied to his phone number. I smelled another rat. The problem I now had was that my life had become so infested and overrun with rats that a simple extermination wouldn’t work well enough. He ended up stiffing me on the whole transaction and walking away with the money we gave him, and the DJ business. This was going to require something more drastic but I didn’t know what.